Margaret Frey
ScalziTo me the interesting thing here is the confirmation that Twitter never drove much traffic to news/other sites; people were content to just consume headlines/commentary there. That’s appalling information hygiene, especially since Twitter (and any social media site) is prone to social engineering. We need to aggressively champion the idea that one should seek out news/information at their original (and verifiably competent) sources and sites.
Cleo of Topless Topics@scalzi yes but in defense, the majority of the news articles that were linked to on twitter (at least at the posts that showed up first in feeds) were almost always paywalled. I'd gladly read more articles if I didn't have to pay $15/mo or more for every single publication, of which there are many.
telzey@toplesstopics @scalzi very true unfortunately.
Mark Major@toplesstopics @scalzi It was like Lucy holding the football, and I was Charlie Brown, thinking every time that *this* was going to be the time I'd actually get to read the news article someone posted.
@toplesstopics @scalzi then there is also our changed habits of just reading headlines and making up our mind. Thanks to distrust most have on MSM, no one gives full trust to curated content of traditional newspaper. So, end up just consuming 'trending' news. Twitter is best for that and journalists are forced to insert themselves in search of eyeballs.
Rick@toplesstopics @scalzi The paywalling of credible news and proliferation of free disinformation disguised as news is the real issue.
ActivityPub could at least allow people to aggregate headlines with much less influence from social engineering.
Kylee@scalzi I usually found first-person accounts on twitter before the news sites had anything, and I’ll definitely miss that part of it. Properly reported news is still important, of course, though finding it seems harder and harder
Aaron Sawdey, Ph.D.@scalzi My MO on twitter was generally to find individual reporters who I felt were well informed and trustworthy, and they would generally post links to articles they had written. And some reporters would live-tweet press conferences or other events they were attending that gave you a bit of an advanced picture of things happening.
Now -> 
Grant Gould@scalzi I think this reflects that sites like twitter provide a friendlier UI to the news than actual newspaper sites.
The success of, uh, let's call it "social curation of story snippets from many publishers presented sequentially" user experience over the traditional "editorial curation of headlines from a single publisher presented splatted all over a page" ought to be informative to news organizations' design teams.
The success of, uh, let's call it "social curation of story snippets from many publishers presented sequentially" user experience over the traditional "editorial curation of headlines from a single publisher presented splatted all over a page" ought to be informative to news organizations' design teams.
bubbajet@scalzi
I almost boosted this without clicking the link and reading the story. Almost.
I almost boosted this without clicking the link and reading the story. Almost.
Crumbs the Cat@scalzi listening to an excerpt from the “Fiasco: Vigilante” podcast the other day I was struck by a detail about ‘80’s New York news consumption: it wasn’t so much that people’s perceptions were driven by the sensationalistic news stories they read in tabloids like the NY Post on the subway—most people likely only read the headlines on other people’s copies of the Post.
Which is to say I’m not so sure information hygiene has ever been particularly great.
Johns@scalzi Believe me I try, all the time.
For every "I heard that.." I respond with a "let's Google that shit" and show them how easy it is to find the truth.
The amount of RESISTANCE to the simple fact of checking the information instead of regurgitate whatever bullshit came through is depressing.
For every "I heard that.." I respond with a "let's Google that shit" and show them how easy it is to find the truth.
The amount of RESISTANCE to the simple fact of checking the information instead of regurgitate whatever bullshit came through is depressing.
fedward 
@scalzi Cynically, I doubt we can thread that needle since the people most prone to believing the disinformation propagated on social media are the ones who also believe that “the LIE-beral media” can’t be trusted and spreading their own Do tHe ReSEarCh garbage when they’re not drinking bleach.
@scalzi Back in the mid-2010s it became clear in our institution's analytics that Twitter (and other social media) was no longer driving more than a trickle traffic to our website. Tens of thousands of people would see our posts, but few would click through to our videos or our articles; almost all the interaction was within social platform. There's some value to engagement for engagement's sake, but then you really become beholden to matching your format to the demands of the algorithms.
miketcope@scalzi I’ll take your word for it
Kathy E. Gill 🇺🇦@scalzi
I’m going to state the obvious… because we have to overcome these things:
- poor media literacy In General (otherwise Fox & far right ecosystem would have no demand)
- limited time/attention
- emotional hijacking
- confirmation bias
Sometimes I remind myself that Internet-enabled instant global communication + everyone with a functioning newsroom in their hands is too new for us to have social norms. But I fear we don’t have time to adapt here anymore than we have time to remedy CO2.
Pyperkub@scalzi For US Politics - I have gone with memeorandum to be able to at least compare/contrast sources, as well as to see what Monsters are bubbling up from the id of the Conservative misinformation machine. #MonstersFromTheID (obligatory #ForbiddenPlanet image!) https://www.memeorandum.com/
@scalzi Memeorandum is, of course, loaded with (political) Opinion porn, but what isn't nowadays? It's easy, and, essentially worthless, unless you are selling something (like misinformation for profit).
Chancerubbage@scalzi verifying competence might require time travel. It’s a lost art for a few decades now.
RodneyPetersonTalentAgencyTo do so ignores the fact that most people intellectually are lazy fucking morons, and everyone is a moron in certain topics.
commie lib (not a joke)@scalzi my favorite thing about twitter was clicking a link to a news article and the majority of the reporting was embedded tweets. Twitter was crack for journalists.
Very Human Robot@scalzi but that's work, and it's pretty clear by now that most people view news as entertainment.
Isaac@scalzi I think we should just do something about clickbait so that headlines become a valid summary. Honestly the twitter community notes thing was pretty good
Dogzilla@scalzi With all the metrics they had, Twitter itself must have realized how their design and presentation encouraged this, yet they kept it
Potung ThulYup. I agree with what that techcrunch.com article says. Or at least what you said it says -- I never actually read the linked article.
Q.H. Stone@scalzi Elon Musk wants to be sure you see HIS ads, not some other site’s ads.
rm -lininger@scalzi a lie can travel halfway around the world before the truthseekers can find their credit card numbers
@scalzi I’m pretty sure this was by design and was the main reason for Musks purchase.